Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

I wasn't interested in the emotional story behind this. But I did resonate with 1 line in particular here: "It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth."

This is so true, in my experience. You hit a roadblock in recurring revenue, not because your product doesn't have enough features, or your team sucks, but simply: your market is smaller than you thought.

Scaling to a billion dollar company in that market was certainly attainable. Patreon started two years after Gumroad and now look where they are. Gumroad had a movers first advantage - so I really disagree with the quote. Had they continued to push feature development and tweak PMF they could have been a billion dollar company.

Don't take that as a slight to Gumroad either. Building a profitable business from almost going under and now generating close to $1m in annual profits is an incredible feat. But I do disagree with the point that the market wasn't ready (as clearly demonstrated by the success of others).

Patreon and Gumroad were different businesses for most of their histories. Gumroad was always a place to sell stuff and launch subscription services. Patreon is trying to pivot that way now with all their talk of membership businesses, but no one who uses it seems to see it that way.

That's why everyone was up in arms about the fee change in 2017. People tossing $1 here and there to people they liked were the foundation of everything. Membership businesses generally start at $5 a month.

And Patreon isn't going to have much luck with it. There are so many better options if someone just wants to set up a membership business. Memberful, which they bought, wasn't even one of the better options. It doesn't even handle anything other than plans, payments, and integrations with services that do the heavy lifting.